Fielding Kidd Elected 2010-11 Captain

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Junior defender
Fielding Kidd (Atlanta, Ga.) has been elected
Yale's 2010-11 women's lacrosse captain after a team vote held
Monday morning at Ray Tompkins House. She is the 36th
captain in program history.

“Our class is a very strong class, so the fact that my
team chose me is a great honor and very humbling,” Kidd said.

Kidd is the third captain under Anne Phillips, Yale's Joel E.
Smilow, Class of 1954 Head Coach of Women's Lacrosse.

“Fielding will not only lead this team as captain, but
also as a vocal leader of the defense,” Phillips said.
“As captain she is part of a very large class that will
provide support in her leadership role. Her challenge is to help
continue the team's progress.”

Kidd leads a Yale team that is looking to build on the
accomplishments of the past year, which included knocking off
then-No. 13 BU on the road and coming up with three hard-fought Ivy
League wins. Yale also started establishing Reese Stadium, which
will be dramatically transformed by renovation this coming
offseason, as a tough place for opposing teams to play. The
Bulldogs went 3-1 against Ivy teams at Reese, and the lone loss was
a narrow 7-5 defeat to eventual league champion Penn. No other
league team held the Quakers to fewer goals, and even five-time
NCAA champion Northwestern allowed Penn eight goals. In the end,
the Bulldogs missed out on a spot in the Ivy League Tournament by
just one win.

“Next year can be a great year,” Kidd said.
“It's going to take every member of the 2011 class to lead. I
look forward to being a part of that leadership. Anne Phillips has
brought this team along and now it's time for us to step up and
take advantage of what's in front of us, which is a chance not just
to go to the Ivy League Tournament but to win it.”

Kidd's path to playing lacrosse at the collegiate level was not
a conventional one. Coming from Atlanta -- not a traditional
recruiting hotbed -- she had to find ways to get in front of
college coaches to make an impression.

“Recruiting was a very different scene for me,” Kidd
said. “I had to work really hard to get recruited. There was
one summer where I only had 14 days off. I went from camp to
tournament to camp to training sessions … I lived out of a
suitcase and my lacrosse bag. I knew I just had to get out there
and get seen.”

Academics were a major factor in Kidd's decision to come to
Yale. She is a political science major in Jonathan Edwards College.
After spending last summer in New York City as an intern with NBC
Sports, she will spend this summer in New York again as an intern
with ESPN. She is working on espnW, which will focus specifically
on female athletes.

“Yale has been an amazing place for me to grow
personally,” Kidd said. “It has opened a lot of doors.
Some of the people I've met here will be my best friends for life.
The lessons that I've learned in the classroom have been important,
but the lessons I've learned from the people surrounding me are
equally important.”

Kidd is the second straight defender elected captain, following
in the footsteps of senior Claire Eliasberg (San Diego,
Calif.).

“Claire was, for me, an amazing captain,” Kidd said.
“She handles herself with such grace and poise, and was so
effective in dealing with any problems that came up. I can only
hope to fill her shoes. She's left a tremendous legacy.”

Kidd also credits her younger brother, Jack, for pushing her
athletically. Jack is in his junior year as a football and soccer
player at Westminster, the same school Fielding attended.

“I attribute a lot of my athleticism to playing with
him,” she said. “To this day, when I come home from
Yale, it's 'Let's have a race.'”

After appearing in eight games as a freshman Kidd became a key
part of Yale's defense her sophomore season, starting all 16 games.
That year the Bulldogs held seven of their final nine opponents to
eight or fewer goals, and ranked 13th in the country in scoring
defense (9.19 goals per game).

Kidd has battled injuries throughout her career, and the most
serious of those was a pelvic injury diagnosed this year. She still
wound up playing in every game this past season, extending her
streak of consecutive games played to 33.

“I made the decision to play with this injury that is
inoperable,” Kidd said. “I was committed to this
program and committed to playing through that injury.”

Other than games started (30 over the past two years), there are
few other statistics that can accurately measure Kidd's impact on
the team. She routinely marks one of the opposing team's top
players, and she has totaled 34 ground balls and 18 caused
turnovers in the past two years.

“Being on defense, you don't always get all the glory, the
chance to score goals,” Kidd said. “For me, the only
thing that matters is that every player on this team knows that I
am committed to doing everything possible to stop that ball, and to
stop the girl I'm defending.”